Hi Gangue,
Bad news is I'm back! and so is the Sunday Salsa. When we went off to
Spain we were in the thick of the Foot and Mouth thing. We are still
there I'm afraid, there does seem to be a slight slackening off in the
numbers of reported and confirmed cases, but we are looking at over 2M
animals "culled" so far, and more to come.
One of the owners of five pet sheep, a rare Dutch breed I beleieve,
something like Zwerrtles sheep, (sorry if I got the name wrong)
barricaded them into her house lounge to try to stop the killing, but
was over-ruled on the grounds that they are not rare in Holland!
So five healthy (certified to be free of Foot and Mouth) pet sheep were
killed because they were within 3 km of a farm which has got confirmed cases.
It's tough being in the wrong place at the wrong time eh?
Spain was lovely. Mild spring weather, all around 19 to 20 degrees, very
pleasant to sit with a San Miguel (or two, or three *>} ) and watch the
world go by.
We visited a lot of places that are our favourites, San Pere Pescador,
La Bisbal, 'l Estartit, Palamos, San Antoni de Calonge to name just a
few of them, and generally enjoyed a pleasant, quiet break. Came back
with some of a sun tan, well enopugh to show we had been away. Now we
are looking forward to our next (MAIN) vacation to the Black Sea and
Bulgaria, the resort of "Golden Sands" in English, ISTR Zlatni Piasaci
in Bulgar Anglicised. If you don't know, Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic
alphabet form. We have been once before, and we enjoyed it very much.
Again on this holiday we are going with our two grandchildren and my
Daughter and son-in-law so that should be good.
Arachne is now pretty stable here, and I just use it in a very basic form
to do some e-mail and browsing, plus chcek browsing of various websites.
My commitments to commercial website customers plus the fact I am still
doing a full-time job and emergency call-out work means I don't have much
time just now to work at Arachne to get it fully optimized. I will
someday, promise!
The weather here to-day in Edinburgh has been superb, up almost as hot
as Spain at around 19 degrees and sunny all day, as I type I can see a
tinge of orange/red in the direction of Edinburgh Castle from my window.
Does that mean to-morrow will be good as well?
Caravanning still at a bit of a standstill with the effects of the F & M
crisis, so nothing much to tell you there.
On one of the other lists I am a member of, one of the Stateside people
was moaning about the $2 gallon of gas. Phew, I thought, if only. We are
paying around 3.90 UKp per gallon here for both gas (petrol) and diesel
oil. That equates to around $5.20 per gallon at current exchange rates.
I noticed on my journey to Sapin that France and Spain are both much
less than that. It is really shocking that a world commodity like fuel
can vary so much from country to country. Obviously motorists are an
easy tax "hit" for balancing the books of most countries governments.
And of course a bottle of Scotch costs less almost anywhere else in the
world than it does here where it's made!
Ella calls. She's made me a Brandy Shandy, tall glass, ice, double
measure of brandy, topped up with lemonade, (not the cloudy stuff,
british style lemonade, clear and fizzy, like Seven-up or Sprite)
loveley stuff, I'm away to sit in the garden with it for a few last
minutes of sunshine before it goes down at the back of the house.
Take care, you're all welcome to join me in the next half-hour or so,
but you'll need to provide your own tipples!
Regards
Mel
-- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/
